I woke up one morning, and for some reason I wanted to write about the Enterprise characters' sweet sixteen birthdays. This is what happened.
Disclaimer: I don't own Enterprise. I don't own the characters. This is only the product of some dream I don't remember.
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Hoshi
5:05 pm
Well, they're only five minutes late, Hoshi Sato thought to herself. She supposed to be having a birthday party with some of her closet friends, but none of them had shown up yet. A cone-shaped party hat sat on top of her head as sat at the table in her family's dining room. Not even her parents were there; both of them were out of town. But, she didn't worry -- her friends would be around soon enough.
5:15
Fifteen minutes late. Maybe they were all going to burst out of the closets and surprise me? Hoshi was getting anxious. She had resorted to playing all of the birthday whistles in boredom. Her eyes had become permanently fixed on the clock on the wall, watching the seconds tick by.
The hat had started to dig painfully into her throat, but she wouldn't take it off. When her friends came, if she didn't look like she having a good time for her sixteenth birthday, she'd be humiliated. "You were late" just wouldn't be a good excuse. So still had time...
5:24
Traffic can hold you up for twenty-four minutes, easy. Hoshi gnawed on her lip, still sitting in her 'honorary' chair her friends had told her to sit in when she talked to them last. Banners and ribbons hung off it, and the arms were even wrapped in toilet paper -- that just so happened to have various different foreign words written across it. She had actually started to translate all of the numerous phrases. There were actually some very funny things on it.
Her fingernails drummed on the table, whistling quietly to herself. Her cake sat in front of her, completely untouched. The vanilla and chocolate swirled frosting looked oh-so-tempting, she almost found herself reaching for her fork.
But again, she just couldn't. It would be rude to just start digging into the cake. They're just stuck in traffic.
5:37
One half of the "Happy Birthday, Hoshi!" banner fell. She crawled from her seat, stretching out her stiff joints before she dragged a chair over to try and reattach the one side of the banner. After a few attempts, the other side came undone as well, sending the sign floating to the floor. Now all that showed was "Birthday, Hoshi". No 'happy', no exclamation point. The linguist-to-be thought that the sign was incredibly right.
That's when she heard the doorbell ring. She leapt from the chair, nearly twisting her ankle in the process, sprinting to the door with newfound energy. She opened it, beaming and spirited with a shout of "You finally made it!"
A stranger stood at the door. "Yes, indeed I have. Would you like to send a donation to the 'Warp Five Pavilion and Research" fund? Every penny contributes --"
"No thank you, I don't have any money." Hoshi cut in, closing the door in the man's face. Tears stung her eyes as she returned to the dining room, to her fallen banner and toilet papered chair. She didn't care about going through space at warp five, or any other speed for that matter.
5:51
The poor cake didn't stand a chance. At first Hoshi was trying to be subtle, taking off a chocolate rose and covering over the spot to make it look normal. After her friends were fifty minutes late, though, she just took her fork and started digging in. It was quite good, really, fluffy chocolate cake with lemon and vanilla filling. Her friends would've loved it.
A quarter of the cake was gone before she even noticed it. It wasn't even cut neatly into to slices, she had just wrenched the platter over and started eating. She barely even enjoyed the confection. She didn't care about looking like a pig, or the fact that she had crumbs all down her nice, white sundress. Her friends weren't coming...
6:00
She called one of her friend's, Joey's, house. No one answered her message. That meant no one was around, or no one cared about a phone call. She was completely alone on her own birthday, half her cake was gone, and she had not a single present to her name.
That prompted her into action. She picked something randomly out of her jewelry box and wrapped it up. She waited for a little while, then tore into the paper and tried to act surprised when she 'received' and gold necklace from herself. I'm so pathetic, she thought, whimpering as she threw the necklace onto the ground.
6:33
The cake was gone. She had eaten the entire thing. Hoshi barely even noticed any difference it made on her appetite. She had been sick to her stomach when she started eating the thing, why should she feel any different now? The party hat had been ripped off her head just a few moments ago, and it now lay in a torn heap on the ground.
The decorations all over the house had been taken down when the hour-and-a-half mark hit. She had to live with the fact that no one was showing up. It wasn't that hard to deal with, really. She just had to act like it was another day in her life, not a birthday…
6:45
Hoshi turned on her computer and started to look over the messages that had been left over the past two hours.
"Hosh, I'm stuck in traffic. Can we meet at the Warp Five Café?"
"My car just broke down. I don't think I can make it Hoshi, sorry!"
"Oh my God, I thought today was Sunday, not Monday! Sheila just called me to say we were meeting at the Warp Five Café for your birthday party! I'll be there in twenty minutes"
"I just wanted to say 'Happy Birthday', to tide you over until tomorrow. That's your birthday, right?"
"I'm grounded, Hoshi. I shouldn't have taken the hovercar out for a spin last night. Mom won't let me come to your party."
"Some of us are waiting for you at the café, it's been a half hour, where are you?"
She felt miserable. Two of her friends had completely forgotten her birthday, others couldn't even show up. She really didn't feel like going to a birthday party anymore. She turned out the light and crawled into bed with a sigh. She curled up with her pillow and had forced herself to sleep by seven o'clock...